


Monsters

by dragonofdispair



Series: Vampiric Codex [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Vampires, Blood Drinking, Dark Fantasy, Feral Behavior, Gen, Possessive Behavior, Ratchet’s an idiot, Vampire!Drift, Vampires, War Crimes, platonic pre-relationship dratchet if you tilt your head and squint really really hard, taking the idea of vampire TFs to its rather horrific logical extreme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 03:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15788229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: All flavor of monsters lurk in Cybertron’s dark places, from the senate halls to the gladiator pits to the slums beneath Iacon’s streets. This is the story of just one of them.





	Monsters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unicron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unicron/gifts).
  * Inspired by [AU August](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15526215) by [Unicron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unicron/pseuds/Unicron). 



> For Unicron84 - THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!
> 
> Beta’d by Rizobact
> 
>  **Warnings** for blood drinking, possessive behavior, mentions of slavery, and non-graphic descriptions of a rather horrific example of a genocide/war crime.

_This our time, the night's our day ~♪_  
          ~ Abney Park, [The Wrong Side](https://youtu.be/abiXhS7iQ84)

.

＊＊＊

.

The poor wretch didn’t even react when the door of the trap snapped closed. It— _he_ was too busy feeding hungrily on the sacrificial turbodog they’d used as bait. Ratchet shuddered to think of how close the creature was to starving to not even notice he was trapped. Starving, but unable to even die. Dogs weren’t a vampire’s usual prey, too many teeth of their own, but it’d been easier than making a trap turborats and cybercats couldn't escape from before the trap closed; Ratchet certainly wasn’t going to use a mech as bait!

The vampire noticed when the two mechs stepped close enough for him to scent. He quickly finished draining the dog and dropped the corpse to join the rest of the refuse on the ground. Feral optics examined this new prey/threat without even a hint of the intelligence the mech he’d once been must have possessed. Vampires were clever though, even when they’d been reduced to only the base intelligence of a predator. Fastidiously, he cleaned energon from his claws, recognizing the bars as a barrier, even if he had not yet realized he’d been trapped.

Ratchet and Orion were too healthy to be this creature’s usual prey anyway. Not that that’d stop a determined vampire, especially a starving one. But they also wore the proper protections to keep this one at bay. Orion had been skeptical, but Ratchet had insisted.

Orion was watching the creature clean itself, optics going wide at the sight of fangs and claws and burning red optics. “…Primus.”

The creature didn’t flinch. Primus wasn’t a god the local slum dwellers called on, so the name had no power over this particular vampire, unlike the more civilized vampires forced to fight in the gladiator pits. Ratchet wasn’t sure how that worked, but it was the basis of the symbiosis slum vampires had with the residents in their territory. Without the light of the sun, vampires made under Iacon’s plates didn't experience dormant time, and without a sky there was a lack of true symbolically significant thresholds. That meant the mechs down here were always vulnerable to them. A combination of sacrifices, suicides, and the invocation of a lengthy collection of “saints” and “angels” kept them at bay, and in return they were protected from those who didn’t know the proper rituals. Like police. There was a reason surface dwellers almost never went beneath the plates.

“Still want a closer look?” Ratchet asked with a lightness he didn’t feel. Orion may not want a closer look, but he needed to see what sort of monster he was courting. Unlike the gladiators, this vampire couldn’t retract his fangs and close his mouth properly, and he panted totally unneeded air through his open mouth like an mechanimal. Similarly, his claws were almost as long as his entire hand, strong enough to rip metal and concrete to shreds. His posture was hunched, predatory, with no veneer of mech-like behavior to mask the monster. “Under the smooth words, this is what your gladiator is. Worse even. I guarantee Megatronus has fed on unwilling prey; this one sustains himself on suicides and turborats.” Though not for lack of trying.

“Being starved until he’ll attack anything thrown into his pen does not make him a murderer,” Orion insisted stubbornly, and Ratchet scoffed. There was no way Megatronus was _starved,_ not given his strength and the state of his plating. A vampire just didn’t get that strong without feeding on the energon of mechs — frequently. The difference between the gladiator and the slum vampire in the cage was light years apart to Ratchet. Megatronus _gleamed,_ perfectly groomed; this creature barely had plating at all, it was so thin and torn. There were parts Ratchet wasn’t sure were actually still bolted together; instead they looked like they might be glued together by the grime.

 _This one_ Ratchet would believe wasn’t truly guilty of his murders for being starved out of his mind.

“Vampires don’t choose to become what they are, Ratchet,” Orion continued. “They didn’t ask to be rounded up by the thousands and confined to the pits because they make us nervous. They don’t choose to be monsters. They don’t _have_ to be.”

“Do you know how much living energon it takes to sustain a gladiator’s strength?” Ratchet retorted. Maybe Orion and Megatronus’ writings were right about the history of the vampires in the gladiator pits, but Ratchet would be damned if he let history cloud the vampire’s present choices. “One of the _advantages_ of living in the territory of a feral like this one for the locals is _not getting kidnapped to feed your entertainment.”_

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Believe me. All Megatronus wants is to turn living mechs into raised livestock.”

“You’re wrong, Ratchet.” _You have to be wrong,_ Ratchet heard.

The medic scoffed again. “Are you willing to stake your life on it? Because that’s what’ll happen if you follow this path: you’ll be trusting he won’t turn you into a blood meal.”

“I’ll be fine.” Orion looked around the alley. “What are we doing with this one?”

“Releasing him,” Ratchet answered. There really wasn’t any other choice. Feral vampires were territorial, and as long as this patch of slums had this vampire, they knew which names to invoke to protect their plating and shelters. If they killed this vampire now, the residents would be safe only until another took his place — one who might not respond to the local religion.

Orion’s EM field felt smug, though. He saw Ratchet’s perfectly practical action as proof that vampires could be something other than monsters. If this one could be trusted…

Ratchet _didn’t_ trust this creature, but he’d rather deal with a slum feral than one of the civilized monsters who lived on the surface. A feral was a canny creature true, but he couldn’t _plan._ He couldn’t _lie._ This vampire would never hide his true nature. He was no less predatory, but Ratchet preferred the honesty of the slums to Megatronus’ silvered tongue.

Orion wanted to help Ratchet release the creature they’d captured, but they’d need a second distraction of proffered fuel to get away cleanly, even protected as they were. He had been calm in the cage, but he was too likely to be enraged by even temporary captivity, and Orion was too likely to invoke the wrong gods if the vampire went for him.

Thoroughly fed up with arguing, he stomped his way back to the surface where he could leave Orion without the dumb librarian getting himself killed and eaten — at least not immediately. He took a klik to appreciate the stark difference between the darkness under the plate to the light above it. The glittering towers in Iacon’s center reached up to the sky, while around them, peaceful shops and homes sprawled out on the false ground of the plates separating them from the slums. It was as much an illusion as Megatronus’ veil of civilized behavior, built — like the gladiator pits themselves — on the blood and suffering of those beneath. And there were still vampires here, like Dai Atlas and his followers. A beautiful illusion didn’t negate the presence of monsters. Some small few had escaped that long-ago purge, through untouchable political power or deception. They lived “peaceful” lives now, bright shining examples for Megatronus to cite about how vampires could live side-by-side with their prey. Ratchet scoffed, disbelieving, and returned to the darkness of the slums.

Ratchet stopped by the clinic to pick up the box of turborats he’d collected to offer as his own sacrifice to placate the local predator. With his surface-bought rat traps, Ratchet always had more than the “required” sacrifice of turborats to keep the local monster placated. He usually sent the extras with his patients — recovering mechs who couldn’t catch the vermin themselves — so that the vampire wouldn’t bother them. Now, though, the extra rats were going to serve a different sort of distraction.

The vampire was pacing, snarling at the bars. Ratchet saw the scratches on the floor of the alley from him trying to dig his way out, and thought this place would probably be considered an unlucky place by the residents for centivorns because of them.

The vampire whirled as Ratchet came back into scent-range. He didn’t throw himself at the bars, but his gaze locked on the threat/prey again.

It wasn’t like Ratchet was ignorant of Megatronus’ assertions, and they sounded good, in theory. Vampires still had a mech’s processor, a mech’s spark, and most of them had not chosen to become what they were. There was no reason a vampire had to revel in his kills. There _were_ those few who didn’t. That ignored why the old vampires had been confined to the arenas in the first place: they were, all of them, dangerous, and if Ratchet had been built just a few lifetimes earlier, he would have advocated killing them all instead of merely locking them up. Dai Atlas lived under the constant threat of death if his feeding got out of hand, coercing or killing his prey. Megatronus had proven his nature, proved he would kill mechs to steal their strength, not just to survive. But this one… this one truly was out of his mind. Who knew what he’d choose if he wasn’t?

“This is the first time you’ve let yourself be captured,” Ratchet murmured. The vampire snarled at the sound of Ratchet’s voice; there was no sign he understood it as anything more than a deliberate sound. He really was in bad shape…

Ratchet nudged the box of rats into the cage. Conditioned to recognize that boxes contained food by the shape of the slum dwellers’ beliefs in how to properly lay out sacrifices for the predator in their midst, the vampire pounced, snatching up the box and immediately digging out a rat and biting into it with distended fangs.

It was gruesome, but Ratchet hadn’t expected anything less.

He waited until the vampire had drained a third rat, for the frantic, jerky starvation to fade and for slight amazement to creep into the creature’s optics that there were _still more rats to eat,_ then called out, “Drift.”

This time the vampire looked up at him with a snarl. There still wasn’t anything like sense or understanding in that gaze, but he had recognized the word.

“That’s what they call you: Drift,” Ratchet went on. It wasn’t quite true. The religion of saints and angels occasionally called on their local monster to call curses down on their enemies, and that was the name invoked in this area of the slums. It probably wasn’t the vampire’s pre-transformation name, but Ratchet didn’t have any other to use. “I wasn’t sure you’d respond to it,” Ratchet said and saw no real comprehension in his gaze. “Drift.” The vampire stepped forward, tilting his head. It wasn’t recognition, or communication, but it was a response.

So either it _was_ the vampire’s name, or the local religion had more effects on the vampire than which gods could be called on to protect a mech from him.

When Ratchet didn’t call out his name again, Drift turned back to the box of squeaking, struggling rats. Ratchet tried a few more sentences that didn’t include his name, but Drift only twitched his eroded armor at the sound. A box of rats weren’t going to be enough to sate him, drive back the hunger enough to allow true communication.

“Drift,” he called, one last time, just to make sure the previous times hadn’t been a fluke, and the vampire looked up, waited, then went back to his meal.

Still unsure what he was going to do with this information, Ratchet stepped forward to release the creature from the cage. Drift noticed immediately and darted out to freedom so quickly he climbed right over Ratchet to do so. The medic shivered to feel those oversized claws skitter over his plating and his fuel pump hammered.

But the vampire hadn’t struck. Ratchet didn’t know if he’d been placated by the rats, warded off by the names of the angels painted on his plating, or intrigued by the use of his name, but he hadn’t taken the chance to turn Ratchet into a meal.

He still crouched there, just outside the trap, feeding on the remaining rats. Now that he was free, Ratchet didn’t quite dare call out his name and attract his attention again just yet. He edged away, and the vampire glanced up, then dismissed Ratchet as a threat and looked away.

Certain he’d pushed his luck far enough for one cycle, Ratchet took his chance and left.

.

＊＊＊

.

He watched Orion and Megatronus circle each other like binary stars in each others’ orbit, slowly swirling together to create what promised to be a truly spectacular explosion. Ratchet kept trying to dissuade his friend. Maybe those fanciful writings were right, and vampires and living mechs could coexist, but _Megatronus_ wasn’t the one test that out with!

Ratchet wasn’t sure Drift was either, but some of his patients had come in with bites from a vampire from the neighboring territory, encroaching on Drift’s hunting grounds. The new vampire didn’t respond as readily to protective etchings as Drift did, which meant he (or she) could enter warded buildings. Ratchet had lots of time to contemplate what he’d do when he next saw the vampire and consider whether it might be worth it to try feeding him a little more so he could better hold off the intruder. He didn’t dare try to trap him again; no matter how feral, he’d learn to avoid the cage and the bait, so best save that for a true emergency. There wasn’t anything the slum dwellers could do about it, except adapt. Ratchet though… he could bring more vermin traps, and feed Drift more, and hopefully give him the edge he needed to push out the encroaching stranger. So he left his overfilled sacrificial box of rats just outside the clinic, in a circle of light, where he’d (hopefully) see Drift come by and take them, and waited. This was probably hopeless…

A dirty reddish-grey shadow moved at the edge of the light. Ratchet heard the cautious clatter of claws on concrete. Dim red optics gleamed, considering the box of proffered fuel and the almost utterly unknown light.

“Drift,” Ratchet called, and red optics looked over to where the medic waited. A snarl rose and fell, as the creature responded to his name. “Drift.”

Grimy plating skirted the edge of the light as the vampire skittered closer with cautious grace. Dark plating flared and he circled, sniffing and tasting the air. Ratchet trembled. He’d hoped to get the creature’s attention, to — slowly — acclimatize him to the sound of his name, with Ratchet’s voice and presence in a context that wasn’t prey, before taking any further steps. Now he was too close to the deadly predator and he wasn’t sure what to do. The name of one of the slum-dwellers’ angels hovered on his lips, ready to drive the creature away.

Drift sneezed, shaking his head. He made a sound of recognition and crouched where he was. Red optics watched him hungrily, but he didn’t attack. Waiting.

“Do you already recognize me?” Ratchet asked, and Drift skittered backwards at the sound. “Drift?” He circled closer, staying out of striking range.

Striking range for either of them, Ratchet realized, recognizing old wounds that had to have come from a desperate slum-dweller’s shiv. Feral with starvation, this vampire was still cautious of preying on anything too healthy to fight back.

Drift’s caution made Ratchet feel better about this. One thing he’d been afraid of was that as the vampire’s health improved, his ability to hunt healthier mechs would as well. But if he was cautious enough not to risk it, despite being desperate…

“I have no idea what do do now,” Ratchet said with a sigh, watching the vampire tilt his head curiously, finally focusing on the medic’s mouth as the source of the sound. He’d sort of planned to, once the vampire was used to him, try and feed him rats, but he hadn’t expected Drift to (unaggressively) approach this soon, and “I left all my rats in the box over there.”

The vampire moved his mouth, imitating some of the movements as best he could with his distended fangs, and let out a growl with his engine.

A scuff and a gasp interrupted the moment. Both of them looked in alarm at the two mechs who had just arrived, one trying to carry the other. Ratchet started to say the angel’s name, to send the vampire away, protect his patient…

Before he could speak, though, Drift darted back to the box of rats and scurried out into the darkness of the slum underdark. Still, Ratchet didn’t dawdle getting his patient(s) inside the warded clinic.

.

＊＊＊

.

The next time it was his cycle to set out his sacrificial box of rats, Ratchet reserved a few in a smaller box he kept with him. He waited again, listening to the nearly silent skitter of claws on stone, watching for the glow of red optics evaluating the proffered meal from the edge of the light.

“Drift,” he called when he saw the creature, and this time wasn’t surprised when he abandoned his rats for a moment to come investigate Ratchet. He stayed out of striking range, but this time didn’t scurry backwards at the sound of Ratchet’s “Hello there.” The medic withdrew a squeaking pest from the box at his feet and held it out to Drift. “This is for you.”

A long flexible tongue swiped over his distended fangs. Optics locked on the loudly protesting turborat, Drift edged closer.

Fear would be counterproductive, Ratchet had decided. He needed to appear the stronger of the two. He needed to set boundaries, and convince this creature — who would, as his strength and intelligence returned to him, if Ratchet kept feeding him extra, quickly become stronger and faster than Ratchet — to abide by those boundaries. That didn’t mean Ratchet found it easy to keep his hand still as the vampire reached for the rat, their plating touching for an instant before the mechanimal was snatched away and Drift retreated out of striking distance to eat.

He took the chance while it was busy to take a better look at him. Primus, he was in rough shape. If he weren’t an immortal monster of the night, Ratchet would have insisted he come inside and get repaired. As it was… well it looked like none of his wounds and degradation was infected with anything. That was the best thing he could say about it.

Of course, as Drift got stronger, the incredible healing vampires were known for would kick in. But, Ratchet thought, digging out the second rat to feed him, wouldn’t that contribute to how hungry he was? Healing took fuel… and there was a lot on that frame to heal. If it weren’t a pipe dream, Ratchet might have entertained the thought of _repairing_ Drift, speeding his climb back into sensible behavior and decreasing his fuel requirements at the same time. It was a dumb thought, and Ratchet deleted it; it wouldn’t be safe to bring him inside the clinic, for the other patients or for Ratchet himself.

.

＊＊＊

.

Ratchet felt that tongue slide around the mechanimal he was offering and up his hand to the gap in his plating at his wrist and he unhesitantly said “Nova In The Night,” the angel’s name that sent Drift flinching, skittering back in pain. He ignored the pounding of his fuel pump, forced his limbs not to shake.

Crouched out of striking distance, Drift gave Ratchet a hurt look.

“You know what you did,” the medic said firmly, despite knowing Drift didn’t understand him yet. “No biting without permission.”

_Sulk._

Ratchet had been wondering what would happen when this moment finally came and the vampire went for him instead of the mechanimal he was offering. The energon of a living mech was, after all, the best food for a hungry vampire, and by the time a slum dweller decided to suicide or was close enough to death he couldn’t call on the angels for protection, he had very little of it left. The medic had known that eventually Drift would be too tempted by the feast under Ratchet’s armor and he’d try something, and Ratchet would have to drive him back. He’d imagined Drift becoming enraged and going for Ratchet more viciously. He’d imagined Drift being driven entirely away by the pain and he’d have to start over from scratch.

Sulking hadn’t quite made the list.

Sulking suggested Drift really did know he’d overstepped.

“Here,” Ratchet said, holding out the rat again. “This is still for you.”

Drift eyed it sideways, then snorted. _Sulk._

“I’m not letting you feed from me, so you’ll take the rat or go without this time.” Ratchet watched carefully for any sign his words were being _understood_ and saw nothing. This odd negotiation was happening entirely with frame language: Ratchet’s firm refusal to yield and Drift’s petulant fit of pique.

Drift tilted his head and circled; Ratchet turned to keep the vampire in sight. He wasn’t letting the creature get behind him!

Fortunately, he gave up on that after only a klik; Drift sat back down with a huff.

“I’m not food,” Ratchet insisted. He held out the rat again. “This is yours. Drift.”

“Weh,” he said piteously. Not a word, but a deliberate sound. Ratchet wasn’t sure what to make of it, until Drift sniffed, making an engine-cough that activated the medic’s diagnostic programming at full power before Ratchet was aware of what the vampire had done. Drift made another cough, and Ratchet almost — _almost —_  moved to help him before he firmly reminded himself _vampires didn’t get sick_ and shut down his misbehaving programs.

“I’m not falling for that.”

Drift seemed to catch on that his ploy wasn’t going to work and he dropped the act. _Sulk._ He darted in, and before Ratchet could speak again to drive him away, snatched the box of rats at the medic’s feet. He skittered away with his prize, then scurried over to the regular box and snatched that up too, leaving the lone rat Ratchet was holding squeaking angrily behind.

Ratchet stared at the rat dumbly. Had he really…? Yes, he answered his own, rhetorical, question. Drift had really chosen to leave fuel behind. Only a morsel — of course he’d taken the box — but still.

Shrugging, he decided to keep the thing. Drift could eat it next time, and releasing it would just be adding one more to the population of vermin in the area.

He entered the clinic and saw his only current patient — a mech named Gasket whom Ratchet knew was a thief and whom, he realized, had been carried in with the same engine-cough Drift had attempted imitating just now — staring at him. “What?”

“Should we be invoking your name for protection?” Gasket asked, far too seriously.

“No!” That was ridiculous.

.

＊＊＊

.

The bowl of clean acetone sat in plain sight, so Drift could accustom himself to it. Ratchet didn’t want to startle him. There hadn’t been a repeat of the vampire trying to get at Ratchet’s energon during his last feeding, so he thought it was time to try something new. Drift had gotten noticeably more clever since Ratchet had started feeding him, but it looked like he was hitting the upper limit of improvement possible on a diet of just rats.

Miraculously, Ratchet hadn’t heard anything about there being more vampire attacks on relatively healthy mechs. Drift had driven off the encroaching vampire, and had not stepped up his own attacks on the residents of his territory in response to becoming healthy. Ratchet was the only one he’d gone for, and the medic was somewhat conflicted about that. He didn’t know what it meant.

He still wanted to try to talk to Drift, though.

Still not willing to feed the vampire mech-fuel, not his own and _definitely_ not willing to give Drift another victim, Ratchet decided to go ahead and see if he could repair Drift. Hopefully the increased health and lessened strain on his healing would bring him closer to being able to speak.

Ratchet knew better than to jump right into repairs. Drift couldn’t be sedated. Repairs on vampires on the surface were done during the sunlight joors, when the vampires were in torpor, but there was no sun down here, and so no dormant period for Drift.

Which meant he was going to try and repair an awake, dangerous mechanism who couldn’t even understand what Ratchet was trying to do. All of a sudden Ratchet had a ton of extra sympathy for vets.

Drift skittered over as soon as Ratchet fished out the first of his extra turborats. The medic no longer needed to call him over, though he kept talking to him, hoping to see any sign that Drift was starting to understand the words, instead of just being accustomed to the sound of his voice. “Hello there. I thought we’d try something today.”

Drift snatched the first rat and bit into it so hard its spinal struts snapped and it died instantly. The limp creature hung from his jaws as he fed. Ratchet had grown used to the sight, but his nasal ridge always wrinkled in disgust at that first horrifying kill.

When the corpse was empty, the rat was dropped to the ground carelessly. Ratchet was already holding out the second one, but Drift crouched to investigate the bowl of acetone first. Now _he_ wrinkled his nose at the strong, sharp scent.

“That’s what we’re going to try today,” Ratchet told him. “Assuming you’re not going to knock it over or somehow protest in some other way…” Drift sniffed the acetone again, but he didn’t knock it over. He did nudge the bowl, marvelling at the resultant ripples. “We’re going to get some of the grime off of you.”

Drift licked the surface of the liquid, then spat it back out with a loud “Bleh!”

“That’s not food,” Ratchet scolded gently.

The vampire gave the liquid an offended look and snatched the rat from Ratchet’s hand and bit into it with only slightly less force than the first.

“I suppose that’s better than you knocking it over,” Ratchet said, resigned. While Drift was busy, he picked up the washcloth he’d set beside the dish and dipped it into the liquid. “It doesn’t hurt,” he assured, demonstrating on his own leg by scrubbing at the plating. The vampire ignored him. “Here goes nothing,” Ratchet muttered, dipping the rag back into the acetone and this time slowly leaning forward to touch Drift’s nearest shoulder.

He wasn’t surprised when the vampire skittered away with a hiss.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Ratchet assured him again. “I’m not going to hurt you. See?” He scrubbed his own plating again, this time watched carefully by a suspicious monster.

Drift stopped hissing and his bristled plating slowly flattened back down.

Ratchet set the rag back in the bowl and pulled another turborat from his box to offer and lure Drift back in close.

With a doubtful look at the bowl, the vampire obliged. This time the bite was almost gentle, with his attention mostly on Ratchet and the bowl. Ratchet moved slowly as he wrung out the rag and touched it to Drift’s shoulder again.

The vampire growled and gave a full-body flinch, but didn’t pull away.

Fuel pump hammering in his chest, Ratchet slowly scrubbed gentle circles on Drift’s shoulder. The growl quieted, but didn’t quite fade away. Wanting to keep Drift distracted from what he was doing for as long as possible, Ratchet offered another rat as soon as he was done with the one he had. And when Drift actually ignored the continued scrubbing to dig out the next squeaking morsel himself, Ratchet gave a silent sigh of relief and concentrated on getting Drift clean.

There was… probably centivorns’ worth of soot and rust and grease and grime buildup on Drift’s plating. There was no way Ratchet was going to get him clean in a single feeding/scrubbing session. Slowly… _slowly…_ In flakes and bits and streaks, layers of the blackened filth came free of the vampire’s armor.

It wasn’t until the first patch of white — _white! —_  plating shone through that Ratchet realized the small amount of acetone still in the bowl was as black as the disgusting armor had been and that Drift had long, long since finished up the proffered food. And yet, while he’d never quite stopped the soft growl deep in his chest, he hadn’t pulled away from Ratchet either.

Leery of what he’d see, Ratchet sought out the vampire’s red gaze, and found it half dimmed in pleasure.

“I guess you like baths,” Ratchet managed to murmur. He hadn’t expected the feral creature to enjoy getting clean. Cautiously, and now aware that there was nothing distracting Drift from the movements, he dipped the rag in the dregs of disgusting acetone and wiped it along the edge of Drift’s finial. The creature growled, but didn’t move away; instead he leaned into the stroke.

“Well…”

.

＊＊＊

.

Leading Drift through the doorway, Ratchet firmly reminded himself that he’d _taken down_ the protective etchings that normally kept the vampire out, not invited him through. Once Drift was gone, he’d put the charms back up and the clinic would be as safe as ever. And he’d fed Drift. Ratchet knew better to think that he was _satitated —_  he was still out of his mind, feral, with hunger — but he’d fed him more than enough that he’d be thinking more about the bath than about food.

This was… possibly the stupidest thing he’d ever done. But he’d spent decacycles scrubbing the vampire’s plating with the rag and bowl of acetone before giving in and acknowledging that Drift needed a spin, or ten, through the clinic’s decontamination shower.

Drift looked around curiously and immediately spotted the clinic’s two current patients. With a hiss he stalked toward them…

“No! Drift!” He held up the rag in promise. “Bath!”

The vampire stopped, looked at Ratchet, then looked at the cowering food. He was visibly conflicted, and Ratchet took a small amount of comfort in that. Maybe… Drift took a step toward the patients again.

“Drift!” Why had Ratchet thought this was a good idea? He hadn’t, really, he admitted, but he’d thought Drift enjoyed the bathing enough… foolish, foolish. And now if he didn’t distract the vampire, he was going to lose two mechs… He didn’t even realize what he was doing, sliding the armor of his wrist away to expose the fuel lines until he bit into his own wrist. “Drift!”

His name or the scent stopped Drift again in his tracks, and this time, one step at a time, he stalked towards Ratchet.

Primus, what was he doing? He should use the moment of attention to lure Drift back outside and send him away, then put the protective etchings back up and bunker himself in and never entertain the idea of “taming” the slum vampire again. Instead, step by inexorable step, Ratchet was backing up toward the decontamination shower, and Drift followed.

Ratchet closed the door to the main clinic and made sure it was locked behind them. He didn't breathe a sigh of relief, because relief while locked into a shower with a hungry vampire _while bleeding_ would be _so far beyond stupid_ even Ratchet couldn't contemplate it yet. But at least once Drift was done with him, the patients outside the door would have a chance to escape. Ratchet braced himself…

But Drift didn't lunge. His red optics were still locked on the energon welling out of Ratchet's wrist, but he came at the medic slowly. Ratchet refused to tremble. He'd gotten into this mess by refusing to be afraid, and he wasn't going to start now. He didn't resist either. He was dead either way, but if he didn't resist, there was the possibility it'd be pleasant for him… There were — _some —_  reports of that, with those few “civilized” surface vampires, not those held prisoner in the gladiator arenas.

Drift dropped to his knees and pulled Ratchet's wrist toward him. The monstrously distended fangs slid into the wound Ratchet's own teeth had left, making the medic wince, deepening and widening it so that the creature could take more energon, faster. He swallowed.

Ratchet fought back a wave of dizziness. There was no way Drift had taken that much yet!

"You're being very gentle," Ratchet said idly, and watched the vampire's finials twitch. Drift was, in fact, being incredibly gentle, given that he was still more than half-feral with hunger. He'd expected Drift to go for his throat, where the energon would flow most freely, or to tear off his hand with his claws in his efforts to get more from the wound on his wrist. Instead Ratchet was awake, still had all his parts, and wasn't even in that much pain. The bite had hurt, but he’d shunted most of the damage warnings into his HUD’s circular file since the damage was relatively minor. Though the warning on his HUD slowly ticking down how much fuel Drift was taking was more than a little ominous. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't at all pleasant. "I don't get people," Ratchet mused, unsure why he was still trying to talk to Drift; it was obvious the vampire didn't understand him at all, and Ratchet was going to die, here, now, before that changed. "There are actually mechs that like this. Dumb in my opinion. There's nothing nice feeling about bleeding to death just because you're sucking it out of me. This was such a bad idea."

Drift's finials twitched. He growled.

"I'm not pulling away. You'll just tear me limb from limb if I did that." Ratchet watched his fuel gauge slowly fall from eighty percent to seventy. He'd started at ninety-five… Maybe Drift was taking more, faster than he'd thought. Ratchet was feeling more than dizzy now. "I want Orion to be able to identify my corpse."

Seventy dropped to sixty, and Ratchet was contemplating if he could just slide down the side of the decontamination shower.

He needed to sit. He needed to sit but he didn't want to provoke any limb-tearing—

At fifty-five percent, Drift inexplicably pulled away. He licked Ratchet's wound clean and skittered away to investigate the far corners of the shower.

Ratchet was sure his processor crashed. When he could focus again, he was sitting, leaning against the wall in an ungainly sprawl. His wrist was bandaged neatly and professionally. He didn't remember doing it, despite still having the roll of metal sealant tape in his other hand.

Drift was hanging off the shower piping, pulling himself up to lick at the showerhead.

"Bleh," he said, spitting out whatever liquid he'd gotten on his tongue, just like he had the first time he'd tasted the acetone from the bowls.

Ratchet blinked. "What…?"

Drift twisted to look at Ratchet and dropped to the floor. Ratchet was too stunned to escape, though he knew he really should take his unexpected survival and run.

"You didn't finish," was all he could say.

Drift made a crooning sound in his engine and reached over to one of the shelves to fling a clean rag at Ratchet, who sluggishly just missed catching it. It landed on his windshield with a soft _fwip_ and Ratchet managed to pick it up before it fell the rest of the way to the floor.

"You still want the bath?" he asked dumbly.

Drift's finials twitched, but he didn't do anything but cock his head curiously. They stared at each other, then the vampire turned away again to continue investigating the showerhead. He eyed the sprayer he'd licked critically, then visibly followed the pipes and tubing down to the shower's controls. He poked them, then shrieked when acetone started raining down on him.

"I suppose I should be grateful I'm good for something other than food," Ratchet said to himself ruefully. He levered himself up off the floor, telling himself that he could function on fifty-five percent fuel. Most of his patients functioned on quite a bit less than that for quite a bit longer than a few breems, or however long Drift let the bath last. He needed to keep Drift from destroying the clinic's shower.

He turned off the shower and waited for Drift to calm. He braced himself against the wall. The brief spray of acetone had already loosened some of the grime Ratchet hadn't been able to scrub off with just a bowl and a rag, and soot and rust laden droplets flew everywhere when Drift shook himself.

"It's not acid," Ratchet said, tone coaxing from long habit. "It's acetone, just like the cleanser I was using outside." He turned the shower on again, this time to only a trickle, and held his own hand under it, to show that it didn't hurt. "You tasted it, I know you did. It's the same stuff."

"Bleh," Drift agreed.

Ratchet froze. Was that… did that mean Drift had understood what he was saying? If so, he wasn't showing any other sign of it. He watched the acetone run over Ratchet's hand, then cautiously put his own under the trickle of liquid as well, to test for himself.

Ratchet wetted the rag in his other hand and ran it over Drift's finial. Outside, with just a bowl and a rag, he'd only just been able to expose the white armor beneath all the dirt, and ten nanokliks under the shower at full blast wasn't going to change that. But Drift's engine let out the familiar growl he'd started making during cleaning and he crouched down, under the trickle of acetone, waiting expectantly for Ratchet to continue.

"I suppose I should get on with it," Ratchet murmured, resetting the controls for the shower. "I wonder if I can put this on my resume." This time Drift didn't flinch when the shower came on full blast. Immediately, darkened streaks began running down the cracks in his armor and to the drain. "'Graduated summa cum laude from Iacon Medical Academy, nine centivorns of experience as a trauma doctor, head medic at Iacon General for three decavorns, officially good for something other than food.' That sound about right?"

Drift sneezed. "Zzsure," he said. He scratched an itchy bit of plating and licked his tongue over his distended fangs like he was annoyed with them. "What'z a resssumes?"

Ratchet dropped the rag in surprise.

The vampire hissed, and picked up the rag. He looked at it like he’d never seen it before, twisting it in his hands this way and that, squeezing the acetone out. Then he held it back up to Ratchet.

“Thank you,” Ratchet said automatically.

Drift didn’t say “you’re welcome”.

“What do you remember?” He’d assumed that when Drift regained enough facilities to speak, he’d have all of his memories, that he’d suddenly be dealing with a not-feral, rational creature. With a look of concentration, the fangs retracted, leaving Drift with a pair of longer than normal for a mech, but not terribly distended, canines. Between that, and getting clean, he was starting to look like a civilized vampire… But not starting to act like one. With the fangs out of the way, Drift licked the acetone-loosened grime from his claws, exactly as he had outside, cleaning the rat energon off of them.  

Drift bunted the hand holding the rag insistently, and Ratchet started scrubbing again. “This place is mine,” he answered with finality, much more clearly than he could have with his fangs still in the way. “All of the dark places are mine.”

His territory. Ratchet really couldn’t argue with that. “What do you eat in the dark places?”

“The things that don’t hurt.”

Anything that didn’t say the words to drive him away, in other words.

Ratchet wanted to argue that, and he did. Drift… Ratchet was surprised the vampire didn’t have much of a temper. As long as Ratchet kept cleaning him, he was happy to talk, even if they were technically arguing about what it was and wasn’t appropriate for him to eat.

Boxes of rats or other mechanimals the slum dwellers set out for him were, of course, okay. Ratchet grudgingly acknowledged that the mechs who laid down in the crossroads — the signal the mech intended to commit suicide-by-vampire — were alright to eat. And he really couldn’t tell Drift not to hunt outsiders, mechs that didn’t belong in his territory, since the slum dwellers depended on that particular behavior for protection, from police, harassment, and being taken for various nefarious purposes by ill meaning surface mechs. Ratchet didn’t want to curb Drift’s inclination to attack outsiders, just for slum residents to be fed to one of the gladiators because of it.

The sticking point was those too injured or sick to resist, but who weren’t committing suicide.

Oh and Ratchet. Ratchet, even though capable of driving him off — making it hurt — was food. Apparently exceptionally tasty food. Lovely. Privately, he attributed that to being healthier than any slum dweller and consistently having extremely high energon levels, especially once Drift compared it to an outsider’s fuel, even though Ratchet was a not-outsider.

But Ratchet was good for something other than food too. Drift understood that when he took too much fuel from something, the something stopped. So he’d eat Ratchet, but not take enough to make him stop. Because then the bath would stop, and there’d be no more baths.

It was blatantly manipulative, but Ratchet promised he could have baths and some of his energon, as long as he other mechs in this building were not-food. Quid-pro-quo. That segued into what a _building_ was and how to recognize that he was in _this_ one, since all the dark places belonged to _Drift._

The lights and scent of _hospital_ turned out the best way to distinguish _this_ building to Drift’s sensibilities, but Ratchet struggled with some way to define _other_ buildings in his territory, which could be made from nothing but discarded packing crates. Buildings, to Ratchet, were defined by occupancy, but when he tried to explain that to Drift, the vampire ruthlessly pointed out that by that definition, all of the “dark places” were a single building.

This was not a problem one ran into with surface vampires. Very few vampires roamed free on the surface, and the sky defined the thresholds to keep them from going where they weren’t welcome. A tent worked as well as a castle.

Glad he hadn’t yet tried to convince Drift to extend his no-hunting to buildings other than the clinic, Ratchet took his minor victory — that Drift wouldn’t eat his patients — and let it go. He’d consult some dictionaries and maybe talk to some constructicons about what made a building a building and come back to Drift.

“Would you like me to fix you?” Ratchet asked as he turned off the shower.

Drift was spinning in place, like a turbodog chasing his tail, trying to see himself. He was white. White with some black patches and a little bit of yellow. Ratchet wondered when the last time he’d seen himself clean was, or if he ever had. Maybe he’d been a slum dweller before being turned, and gone from one sort of starvation to another without ever changing locations. It was probably useless to wonder. Drift was clever, and logical in his approach to hunting, but careful questioning was painting a picture of a mechanism — or a state of mind — that didn’t hold on to long term memories very well. He remembered what and who belonged in his territory, what hurt and what didn’t, when the boxes or rats and other mechanimals appeared for him to eat, that Ratchet was tasty but also good for things other than food, but… nothing else. Or if there were more specific memories buried in there, Ratchet wasn’t going to find them this cycle.

“Fix? What does fix mean?” Drift asked, looking at himself again.

“You’re damaged,” Ratchet pointed out, putting his hand on one of the old stab wounds. Drift had long stopped skittering back when Ratchet touched him, but he saw the flinch. “It hurts,” he simplified the explanation, “I can make it not-hurt.”

Drift tilted his head and considered. “You’re still food.”

Ratchet let out a tense chuckle. “Yeah, but I’m good for things other than food. Like fixing you.”

“Yes,” the vampire agreed. He shook the acetone from his plating, then let Ratchet towel them both dry.

Cautiously Ratchet unlocked the shower door and led the way out into the main part of the clinic. Time to test Drift’s conviction to future Ratchet-snacks and bathtimes. Did that thought sound slightly hysterical? Probably. Ratchet needed a night in a real berth with a real, vampire-proof threshold.

His two patients were still there. Ratchet hadn’t really expected them to go anywhere. But they’d been joined by a quintet of the area’s toughest gangsters, all with knives and shivs ready.

“Doc?”

“We’re fine,” he assured. They all tensed up as Drift stalked out behind him, but the vampire just sniffed; they were out of striking range and, since he couldn’t eat them, unimportant, apparently. “Stand down. He’ll be back outside in a bit.” And then Ratchet would put the protections back in place, and seal this place up tight.

…Until next time. If there was a next time.

One of the toughs, a mech with blue patchwork paint, chuckled nervously. “Always knew you were magic, doc.”

Ratchet scoffed. Magic had nothing to do with it.

Rather than address his guests superstitions, or tell them to get out (a few extra weapons didn’t sound like a bad idea, really, as long as they stayed over there unless Drift turned violent), Ratchet turned back to the vampire. “Up on the berth,” he said, stepping over to the one furthest from the other mechs in the room. He patted it, so Drift would know what he meant. “This’ll be easiest for us both if you’re laying down.”

Drift sniffed, cast a suspicious look at the other mechs, then scrambled up and laid down.

With a sigh of relief that everyone seemed to be behaving, Ratchet started pulling out the tools and supplies he needed. He also downed a cube of medgrade from his stores, to bring himself back up above sixty percent.

Drift sniffed, and Ratchet realized that it might have been a mistake to put himself back in the category of won’t-die-if-bitten, but luckily the vampire didn’t do anything about it.

“Alright,” he said, looking forward to this cycle being over. “Let’s get you fixed.”

.

＊＊＊

.

In the end the only positive thing Ratchet could discern from the whole Megatronus-Orion affair was that Orion _hadn’t_ been personally responsible for opening the cages. He’d been horrified to be proven so catastrophically wrong, but the archivist bore no actual responsibility for what had happened.

No one was quite sure who had let the vampires free. The newly-named Decepticons had some mortal allies, that was clear enough. Or maybe it had been one of the few, free vampires who’d had enough political power to escape being locked up finally reasserting his loyalty back to his own kind. If so, it hardly mattered. Executing those the government could catch had not put the Decepticons back in their cages.

Dai Atlas had escaped that particular pogrom, with a few followers, to who knew where. Most thought they’d followed and joined the Decepticons.

And where did ten thousand angry, hungry former-gladiator vampires go, when faced with modern weapons and the inevitable sunrise? Under the plates. Into Iacon’s underdark, its slums. From there they continued to prey on the surface mechs by the hundreds. They killed the slum dwellers by the _thousands,_ but those slagtards in the Towers didn’t care about that. They only cared that it was proving impossible to round up and kill their escaped pets, who were in turn escalating their surface hunting and violence.

Drift’s territory was holding out against the invasion, barely, and as a result refugees from neighboring territories were migrating there. The ranks of the street gangs turned militias swelled, and sick and injured and drug addled and withdrawal-suffering mechs huddled fearfully in greater numbers than ever before, cringing away from the glimpses of perpetually dirty white plating as much as they hoped for those signs their protector was still alive and free. It was a precarious balance, hinging on the strange partnership of medic and local vampire.

Ratchet wasn’t supposed to be running his clinic anymore. The power had been shut down, and no one was supposed to be allowed through the quarantine zone between Iacon’s upper and lower levels. But Ratchet would be _dead and rusted_ before he gave up on these people, so he still snuck through, evading patrols to bring fuel and first aid supplies to the slum dwellers, treating their injuries as best he could in the dark, dingy conditions now that he couldn’t keep a clean clinic. He continued to feed Drift too, from his own lines, and the fuel and repairs he provided kept the vampire awake and aware — aware enough to pass up the mechs in the alleys who cringed away from him, aware enough to avoid the traps the Decepticons were setting to capture any slum vampires they could find.

Aware enough to time his own attacks on the invaders to the cycle of the unseen sun, to slaughter the rival vampires in his territory while they were at their most vulnerable.

Ratchet breathed a sigh of relief as he drove into the makeshift fortifications of Doubleshot's lair. Doubleshot was the gang leader who'd absorbed Ratchet's clinic when walls had gone from convenient to necessary. Ratchet hadn't fought it. He even treated the gang's various injuries, as long as Doubleshot let the other non-affiliated slum-dwellers in and out of his walls and protected them as well as his own people. Ratchet — the supplies and skills and "magic" bargain with the area's native vampire he brought with him — was a valuable enough asset for him to make that concession.

Still not really understanding the idea of "buildings" or why he should stay out of them, Drift slunk in after him. He smirked at the guards, who aimed their guns at him, but didn't fire. He also came and went freely from this underdark citadel… as long as Ratchet was here. While Ratchet was away, on his supply runs to the surface, the guards shot at Drift as they would any approaching vampire. The protections that had once kept him out of buildings had mostly been replaced by invocations of Primus to repel Decepticons. Some places had kept their old protections against Drift as well, but here, around Ratchet’s clinic, it had become labor intensive to keep taking them down and replacing them whenever Drift needed access.

Ignoring his mostly-white shadow for the moment, Ratchet pulled up to the clinic building and opened his rear doors so Doubleshot’s mechs could unload the crates he'd brought. Well acquainted with Ratchet's rather acidic temper and unwilling to provoke it, especially not with Drift lurking nearby, no one opened them or otherwise tampered with the supplies; they simply took them from Ratchet's bay and placed them into the clinic.

Once empty, Ratchet transformed and stalked inside. The old door was gone, replaced by a large, improvised slab of metal. Rust stains ran down the walls, and acid puddled in one corner. Foot traffic had brought dust in, covering the floor, while exhaust from his patients' overstressed and often unhealthy systems clung to every surface. The bright electric lights still hung from the ceiling, now dark and silent; if Ratchet needed more light than his own systems could produce, he had an oil lamp filled with combustible sludge he could light. It almost physically hurt to see his once-pristine operating and recovery room like this, but the government had cut off the power with the rest of his utilities when the slums had become vampire central. As if that did anything but encourage them to make even more forays up to the surface.

Drift sniffed as he followed Ratchet in. Six mechs snoozed comfortably on the recovery berths, but the vampire ignored them to concentrate on Ratchet. Ratchet, in turn, ignored Drift in favor of pulling a spray bottle of disinfectant and a clean rag from one of the boxes he'd brought. It wouldn't be enough to keep the place clean, but he could at least make sure the berths weren't infestations of filth and disease.

Drift moved between Ratchet and the nearest berth, growling impatiently.

Ratchet narrowed his optics at him. "Not until I'm ready."

Red optics narrowed right back. "I have patrol," Drift growled back. "Gotta check on the rest of _my_ territory, make sure _my_ prey isn't getting poached."

"They aren't your prey," Ratchet retorted.

"Are," Drift insisted. "Just like you are. Sips. Don't make them dead, unless they want me to make them dead. Which they won't if they're eaten by _invaders_ first."

Ratchet knew about the other enclaves, trading blood for Drift's protection. He just… he just wished Drift would be less… less _predatory_ about the whole thing.

"And I need the strength," Drift insisted, crowding close to Ratchet, who refused to back down. He'd _never_ run from Drift and he wasn't going to start now! "I've found one of their nests and I'm going to go slaughter them come sunrise, but they've gotten smart; there's mortal guards."

"You'll manage without my blood," Ratchet retorted. "Or you'll wait until I'm done cleaning this place." Drift’s impatience was just that: impatience. The Decepticon vampires wouldn’t be stirring for another joor; Ratchet wasn’t dumb enough to make this trip after sunset.

Drift growled but backed down with a snarl that showed off his teeth. He stalked away, circling the room, but he didn't leave it. Ratchet didn't breath a sigh of relief; he still didn't know precisely why Drift never forced the issue. Even as a “weak” vampire, he was more than strong enough to do whatever he liked to Ratchet. It wasn't memories from before he was turned, since even after vorns of awareness no memories of who he'd been before going feral had arisen, and Ratchet was hesitant to call it morals.

Quid-pro-quo… It had to be, like it'd always been. Ratchet was still good for something other than food, and Drift had eventually figured out how to extend that to others — if he didn't kill them now, they'd still be there to feed from later — but there was nothing like true empathy in Drift's monstrous spark.

"Do I get cleaned too?" Drift asked, petulantly, as Ratchet finished spraying down and wiping the second dark medberth. "I want a bath. I haven't had one forever."

Ratchet sighed. "Yes. I brought some acetone with your name on it."

The sullen edge of Drift’s pacing eased. Ratchet kept an optic on him. He didn't think Drift would do anything, but it he kept an optic on him anyway, just the same as he would a loose cryosnake, or the edge of a precarious chasm, and for pretty much the same reason. Long past were the cycles where Drift would get his claws caught up in an unfamiliar bit of mesh or cloth, but that didn't make him safe.

"Stay out of there," Ratchet barked when Drift dug those claws into the top of one of his supply crates and ripped it open.

Drift looked up, snarled, and very deliberately ignored the reprimand to dig through the supplies.

Ratchet sighed again. He reminded himself that ruining the supplies was of no interest to the vampire; without them, his "prey" would die, potentially before he could eat them. "What are you looking for?"

"Nothing. I'm putting these away."

Ratchet reset his audios, then refreshed the last ten nanokliks of his auditory memory. The words didn't change. Meanwhile Drift seemed determined to follow through on his weird, impossible… Ratchet wasn't even sure what to call it. An offer? A demand? "You're putting those away?"

"I know where they go!" the vampire growled.

"I'm sure you do," Ratchet said automatically, still processing this new development. Drift was clever, and observant, and had watched Ratchet do these chores almost countless times before. "Why?"

"I want my bath," Drift answered sharply, pulling out the first box, filled with rolls of bandage tape. "And I want you to feed me. But you won't until this is done."

"So you're doing it?"

Drift shoved the box into its proper place, then whirled, red optics blazing. "Is there a problem with that?"

"No." Drift's reasoning, while consummately logical and hunting-focused as ever, was sound; Ratchet had been planning on doing both those things once the berths were clean and the supplies put away. "Fine. You put those away while I finish these and I'll take care of you after."

Drift preened. It wasn't quite smug, but he was always a little proud of himself when he found a new way to manipulate Ratchet. It made the medic want to refuse on principle one of these cycles, but he had the nightmare occasionally that if he ever did, Drift would up the ante, from cleaning the medbay to speed along Ratchet giving him what he want, to threats for the same. And it wasn't like Ratchet was going to _refuse_ to bathe and feed Drift; better to just give in early and never test how far Drift would go.

Still, once he was done cleaning the berths, Ratchet made a point of taking a long moment to inspect the supplies and make sure they were all put away properly, and not just shoved wherever an impatient vampire wanted to shove them. They were, and Ratchet collected the bottle of acetone and a clean rag, while Drift bounced excitedly on his heels like a turbopuppy. The vampire led the way into the clinic's decontamination shower.

The shower was as dead and useless as the lights, but the ceramic tiles were corrosion resistant and clean, and the drainage pipe still worked, whisking any liquid off to be dumped in the sewers. Theoretically, if the pipes were still in good enough condition, it emptied out into the oil river outside Iacon, but realistically it dripped from a thousand cracks to pool in corners, streets, and other inconvenient places. Ratchet wasn't a plumber, and even if he was, crawling around in the dark for cycles patching up endless loose and cracked pipes wasn't an achievable goal. It was enough that the pipes weren’t blocked instead.

Long habit, though, had Drift kneeling under the tarnished and corroded showerhead to get clean. Ratchet opened the bottle and poured a measure of the acetone onto the rag and got to work. The vampire's hands and feet and tires were always the worst off, grime-wise, but he started with the buildup on Drift's helm, on the long finials and around his mouth.

Cleaning the long, sweeping finials especially seemed to calm Drift's nervous, predatory energy. The vampire's red optics were very quickly half-dimmed in pleasure and he panted lightly as Ratchet moved downward. Grimacing silently, he cleaned flecks of dried energon from Drift's buccal armor and mouth, but when Ratchet went to go clean the fangs themselves, Drift jerked back.

"You know the rule," Ratchet scolded gently. "I know it tastes bad, but I'm not letting you bite me when the last thing you fed on was probably a rust-infested turborat."

Drift growled, but opened his mouth to let Ratchet clean his fangs and teeth as best he could.

"Good mech," Ratchet murmured in praise, even though Drift wasn't precisely a mech. There weren't a lot of polite terms for a vampire. "I managed to find a sucker-crystal, so you can get the taste out when I'm done." Ratchet was careful never to _promise_ the goodies before he started, because he — especially since the Decepticons' break out — wasn't always able to find the vampire-safe candies, and he didn't want Drift balking at this because he didn't have the treat one time.

When he was satisfied, Ratchet traded the rag for the candy, which Drift snatched up greedily. He didn't get any nutrition from it, but it wouldn't harm him to eat it like most other fuels would.

Finished there, Ratchet worked his way down Drift's shoulders to his hands. His claws. Again there were flecks of energon and other fluids there. Drift tried to be fastidious, but the only thing he had to clean himself was his tongue. Sometimes he stole rags from the clinic, but Ratchet was the only source of clean acetone in Drift territory. Maybe even the only source anywhere under the plate.

Quickly, Drift was back to dim-opticked pleasure, crouched there and letting Ratchet manipulate his hands and claws as he needed to get them as clean as this setup allowed. Drift could retract his claws, much like he did his fangs, now that he was cozient. He could pass for a civilized vampire, or even a dirty mortal mech as long as he didn’t show off the tips of his fangs, but he didn’t bother. As far as Ratchet knew, such deception had never once even occurred to Drift. He retracted his fangs primarily because it was hard to talk with them fully distended.

With Drift once again pliant with pleasure, it was easy to scrub the rest of his frame as clean as a rag and bottle of acetone could get him, guiding him to lay on the floor to clean his chest and feet, then pulling him back to his crouch to lean on the wall so Ratchet could finish off the bottle of acetone cleaning up his back, erasing any scuffs his brief time on the floor left there.

“Done,” Ratchet announced, swiping the rag once more over Drift’s helm.

Optics suddenly blazing to full brightness, Drift lunged. The name of one of the slum dwellers’ angels fell from Ratchet’s lips and Drift flinched with a hiss. He pulled back, shook his head, and lunged again. Ratchet found himself pinned against the ceramic tiles, Drift’s hand over his mouth to keep him from speaking again. Ratchet braced himself; he’d always known Drift would be the death of him…

…any nanoklik now.

Drift wasn’t biting. He nuzzled Ratchet’s neck, right over the spot it would be easiest to inflict a fatal bite. He licked the fuel line… but he didn’t bite.

“I’m going to let you speak now,” the vampire growled softly. “Don’t make it hurt again.”

Fuel pump hammering in his chest — he was sure Drift could hear that — Ratchet nodded. Claws slowly released him to speak, only to pin him more firmly in place.

“What are you doing, Drift?” Ratchet was proud of how even and confident that came out. He could barely hear his own voice shake.

“I want to bite you,” he nuzzled the fuel line again, “right here. The invaders bite there, and even when they don’t kill, it’s harder to feed on their prey. They’re marked. So I want to make it harder for them to feed on you. You’re _mine.”_

Ratchet didn’t bother refuting that. He’d acknowledged he was Drift’s food a long time ago. “And if I say I don’t want a mark there?” Because he could just _imagine_ how Orion, or, frag, _Prowl_ would react to him coming back with that obvious of a feeding mark. A _claiming_ mark. Given the climate up top, he’d be lucky if he wasn’t strung up by a mob before they could arrange a trial for treason.

Drift growled violently, and Ratchet felt his teeth close on the fuel line, sharp pin pricks of pain, and he braced himself.

Only for the vampire to drop him, stalking away. He kicked the empty bottle of acetone, and with a vicious snarl, pounced on it, exorcising his frustrations on the bit of trash. Ratchet watched him warily, but he didn’t seem inclined to turn that violence on the medic. Still, he held very, very still, doing nothing that would attract his attention until the tantrum ran its course.

When the bottle was no more than shards of plastic he’d have to sweep up later and Drift turned back to him, optics still blazing, Ratchet prepared himself. He refused to show his fear, and there was no place for him to back away to in the shower anyway, as Drift stalked close again.

But the vampire surprised him again, dropping to his knees to nudge Ratchet’s hand, right where normally fed on Ratchet’s wrist.

“Your enclaves,” the mechs Drift protected from the Decepticons in exchange for sips of their fuel, “you’ve already marked them?”

“Yeah.” Ratchet felt fangs on the armor covering the marks Drift had already left on his wrist. “You’re the last. But if I force you, you won’t come back.” And there would be no more feedings and no more baths, and Drift was a creature with his priorities in order, at least.

“I don’t want you feeding there because it’s too easy for you to kill,” Ratchet gave the vampire the reason that would actually make sense to him. Drift wouldn’t understand Orion’s worry or Prowl’s suspicion. Those people weren’t here, weren’t _his,_ and so irrelevant to Drift. He wouldn’t understand why Ratchet could be lumped together with those who guarded the invaders’ lairs, obvious bite mark or no.

“Won’t kill,” Drift pouted. “The invaders will, if they feed on you. I don’t want that. You’re _mine.”_

Ratchet actually believed him. If Drift had wanted to kill him he wouldn’t have backed off. But obviously that didn’t mean he was going to give up on marking Ratchet. What Ratchet wanted only mattered insofar as biting without permission would interfere with future meals. “Feed from my wrist,” he said firmly, “and when you’re done you may put a mark on my neck. _Once._ I won’t give permission a second time.”

Drift perked up, finials twitching. His engine gave one of those strange crooning growls he made when he was pleased with something.

That sorted, Ratchet slid the armor protecting the fuel line in his wrist aside. Drift lunged again, this time catching only Ratchet’s arm in his claws, holding him fast as fangs slid into the fuel line, opening up the scar he’d left there from repeated feedings.

It hurt, it always did, but not as much as Ratchet knew an injury like that objectively should. Even after all this time, he found nothing pleasant about bleeding for this creature. Familiarity had made it tolerable, but not pleasurable. Ratchet watched the fuel warnings on his HUD slowly tick down. He’d made sure he was at 100% before coming down, because Drift was a greedy creature who, honestly, did need the strength to fight off Decepticons who had no compunctions against hunting on the surface and killing their prey and so were much stronger than a feral whose only healthy victim was someone he wouldn’t kill.

This time, when the dizziness and weakness hit as his fuel dipped below 60%, Ratchet didn’t hesitate to let himself slide down the wall and sit, knowing it wouldn’t provoke Drift. The vampire automatically shifted to accommodate the movement. He stayed latched onto Ratchet’s wrist, but paused until he was still again. The medic let his head fall back against the shower tile with a small _thunk._

At 40%, Drift pulled back, licking the wound clean. A roll of first aid tape appeared in Ratchet’s hand from his subspace, and Drift ripped off a piece to stop the bleeding. Ratchet’s armor slid back over his wrist, hiding the incriminating wound from view.

But this time Drift didn’t retreat entirely; he pressed close again, and Ratchet gasped at the _un_ familiar pain of his teeth sliding into the primary energon line in his neck. It _hurt_ but Ratchet didn’t struggle; he watched his fuel rapidly fall another five… six… seven… ten… fifteen… percent… And Drift pulled away again, licking the wound clean and taping it closed.

Ratchet was used to Drift pulling him down to thirty percent, or less. He’d found himself trying to function on fifteen or ten percent at several points. Low fuel warnings flashed, and Ratchet canceled them like he normally did. He still had a quarter of his energon. He’d fuel, as soon as he could stand… which was harder this time, for some reason, than it usually was. The ache that started at the wounds in his neck and wrist seemed to permeate his frame, making his joints stiff and his limbs weak in a way that had nothing to do with lack of fuel.

Never again. He was never letting Drift do that again, no matter how much he insisted. The vampire had what he wanted, Ratchet was marked, and he would have to satisfy himself with biting the wrist only from now on.

Using the wall for support, Ratchet slowly pushed himself to standing. Drift didn’t help, he just watched, but Ratchet did not expect help from that quarter. For all of Drift’s acquired reasoning ability and occasional eloquence, he just wasn’t capable of understanding Ratchet as something other than prey. No empathy.

Ratchet shuffled back out into the main room of the clinic. As they always did when he emerged alive from a private encounter with their vampire, the mechs resting on the darkened medical berths watched and made signs of protection and praise. He’d never been able to convince them that his “control” over Drift wasn’t magic, and most of the slum dwellers treated him like a sorcerer as a result.

Ignoring them, Drift was visibly pleased with himself as he grabbed a fresh roll of tape from the shelf and stalked out of the crumbling clinic. Ratchet watched him go. Doubleshot’s minions would let him out of the walls of scrap that bordered his fortress and the vampire would be gone… for a while. Ratchet checked his chronometer. Sunset. Drift was going to patrol his territory, sip from his enclaves of protected mechs, and eat the mechanimals the slum dwellers still put out in boxes for him, gathering his strength to fight off the Decepticons. Strength he needed to slaughter the lair of them he’d found come sunrise.

Shaking his head, Ratchet put Drift out of his mind for the moment. He dug out two cubes of medical grade energon, and, after a moment’s thought, prescribed himself a dose of painkilling code so he’d be a functional medic when his next patient walked, or was carried, in.

Ratchet had long ago stopped flinching from the spats of gunfire outside the walls. Vampiric invasion or no, the slums were still the slums, and most of the patients Ratchet treated had the same problems they’d always had. There were more sick from withdrawals, since the quarantine zone meant it was harder for mechs to get their hands on circuit boosters and syk, and withdrawal could be fatal if left untreated, even without vampires hunting the streets. Rust infections, cybercrosis, and dozens of other illnesses that thrived in the dark, dirty, cramped conditions were the most common things Ratchet dealt with. Crashes, stab wounds, blunt force trauma, and gunshots were next… and, increasingly, shrapnel, concussive damage, and vampire bites.

Sunrise… sunrise on the surface, at least, meant somewhat of a reprieve for Ratchet, and he collapsed in one corner during the first, relieved lull.

He woke when three gang-toughs brought in a wailing patient on a stretcher. It was obvious his leg and hip were just crushed, and Ratchet didn’t hesitate to give him a dose of sedative code before focusing on the injury.

It didn’t take long to determine the whole assembly, the whole _leg_ even, would have to be replaced. To make things worse, the mech’s plating and struts were both thin and fragile from malnutrition. That was going to make attaching new parts a pain in the af—

_“RATCHET!”_

The medic jerked in surprise. That was Orion… what? The archivist didn’t even _have_ a comsuite that could penetrate the plate and reach Iacon’s underdark…

_“Ratchet! I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, you need to get out of there. Evacuate everyone you can!”_

_“Orion, what—?”_ Ratchet tried to answer, already packing up his patient for transport.

_“They’re dropping the plates! You need to go!”_

.

＊＊＊

.

The devastation didn’t even look real to Ratchet. He stood on the edge of one of the plates, just looking at the rubble below and his processor simply refused to process. Those had been homes, buildings, shops… people… but now it looked like the wilderness beyond Iacon’s walls, or something out of a fairytale. Just… pieces.

Some part of him that wasn’t just numb, in shock, was glad there hadn’t been time in the chaos to bother with such things as due process of law. The Council and the old Prime responsible for the drastic order had simply been shot, while the Autobots, Orion— _Optimus’_ not-so-little vampire hunting group, rushed to stop the tragedy that had been set in motion. They had succeeded, somewhat, but it was a pyrrhic victory at best. Only three plates fell. Three of eight.

Three still represented untold devastation and countless deaths. Murder didn’t cover it. Property destruction didn’t cover it. _Genocide_ and _war crime_ barely covered it.

And somewhere, under some patch of all that rubble, was Ratchet’s clinic. Doubleshot’s citadel. Drift’s entire territory.

Oh Primus, _Drift…_ Ratchet didn’t even know why he was thinking of the vampire now, when there was so much else down there to mourn. He didn’t even _like_ Drift…

“Ratchet?” The medic turned to look dully at Ori—Optimus Prime making his way through the torn connections to the edge where Ratchet stood. He looked from Ratchet to the rubble filled abyss below. “Ratchet, are you—”

“I’m not going to jump,” Ratchet interrupted.

“Ah.” For just a moment, Orion shone through this new Prime’s unfamiliar optics, before being subsumed by Optimus again. “Good. Prowl wanted to be the one to come, but he’s busy so I said I’d check on you.”

Ratchet just looked at him blankly.

“There are a couple mechs worried that you were down there when the plates fell,” Optimus said diplomatically, “since you came back with a vampire’s mark on your neck.”

The bite. Drift’s mark burned all over again, and Ratchet bit back the urge to just tell the new Prime to _frag off._ Anyone who thought _dropping the plates_ would be the best way to get rid of a little vampire infestation could suck Ratchet’s _exhaust port._ He didn’t deserve this! _Drift_ didn’t deserve this!

Drift was gone.

“It was a feeding,” Ratchet answered dully, because that much was true. “He was interrupted before he could kill me,” which was the lie. A lie he would never have told if Drift was still alive. “I’d forgotten it was there.” Also truth.

Optimus nodded, accepting that answer. Prowl wouldn’t have, not so easily, but he was busy. “We could use some help with the wounded.”

Ratchet snarled at the thinly veiled order. “Of course. I’ll be there in a klik.”

.

＊＊＊

.

End

**Author's Note:**

> Here is a link to the [Vampiric Codex Official Timeline](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uS2EX-d3Npd00EkN2SxOa7010AUFPI0TVqiS2vbnsbQ/edit?usp=sharing).


End file.
